With bright, cold morning sunshine greeting us today.. all appears quiet. However, there is a major storm system making it way into the northeast today… one that will have a variety of weather threats. For southern New England, this will be a storm that will bring mostly a windswept rain. By the time the storm lifts away around 1-2″ of rain will fall across RI and southeastern MA.

The cold air that greeted us this morning will slowly fade under a strong easterly-northeasterly wind this evening and tonight. While our area may briefly begin with a mix of sleet or wet snow as the precipitation begins (between 7-11pm), a quick changeover to plain rain is expected. The exception to that, locally, will be far northwestern RI. Updated computer models this morning are indicating that there may be wintry weather into the early hours of Thursday morning (maybe until 2-3am). That’s the area–Cumberland, Burrillville, Foster, Smithfield–that could see a few inches of accumulation, while the rest of southern New England sees little to no accumulating snow.

Accums through Tonight

This will be a storm that produces white gold for ski areas from the Berkshires to VT and NH… with some spots picking up near a foot of snow! Perfect timing with the holiday week!

GFS Snow Totals through 7pm Thursday

The other component with this storm will be the strong winds. Winds will be howling late at night, and areas south and east of Providence are under a high wind watch. East-northeast winds will be sustained around 25-35mph with gusts 45 to near 60mph. Isolated power outages and wind damage are possible.